


dance with me

by timelessidyll



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Drinking, Fluff, Hangovers?, M/M, Mario Kart, cause they're adults and it's a wedding, should that even be tagged idk, yungi got married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 19:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16816729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelessidyll/pseuds/timelessidyll
Summary: in which mingi's wedding, champagne, and mario kart all band together to help hongjoong get a date.





	dance with me

**Author's Note:**

> what up gays i'm back
> 
> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/timelessidyll)  
> [my curiouscat!](https://curiouscat.me/timelessidyll)

“Shut up everyone! Hongjoong is about to give his speech!” Mingi shouts over the chatter of the tables, waiting as the wave of quiet fans throughout the reception room. “Thank you!” he says when he deems it satisfactory. “Hongjoong Kim, my best man, please feel free to begin.” He directs a small smirk in Hongjoong’s direction, and he pulls a face right back. His best friend only acts like this when he was trying his hardest to embarrass him, and it usually works. This one time, he’ll let it slide – it’s Mingi’s wedding after all. As Mingi sits down next to Yunho, Hongjoong stands up, fiddling with his cufflinks. ‘Deep breaths,’ he reminds himself, ‘it’s for Mingi.’

“I’m Hongjoong, and when Mingi was six he laughed so hard at his own picture of an elephant that he peed his pants.” Laughter erupts throughout the room, and Hongjoong catches the look of mock-betrayal that Mingi gives him before scanning the room again. “Thank you, there’s more where that came from!” he yells across the crowd, waiting until everyone stopped laughing to continue.

“So that was a rather unconventional start to a best man’s speech, but I only had four seconds to get you interested in it. I’m not a huge fan of being sentimental, but I do have some positives to say about my friendship with Mingi and about Mingi himself, which I’m sure comes as a surprise to a lot of our friends,” he says with a smile, shrugging his shoulders. Next to him, San stifles his second round of laughter. “Mingi and I go a long way back – I was five when I first met him. Kind of crazy that I’ve known him for so long, but it means I have tons of stupid childhood stories to share when the occasion arises. He was always an anchor for my younger self, keeping me from getting lost in my own daydreams and thoughts, and I truly don’t know what I would’ve done without him. High school was rough, though. I almost ditched him a few times when his acne got really bad.” This introduces another round of laughter, and this time Mingi protests against the “gross mistreatment” Hongjoong was directing at him, ignoring how Yunho was dying next of him from how hard he was laughing.

“Ok, ok, so maybe the acne wasn’t what drove me away. It was the dick jokes,” he says sagely, and the noise in the room increases sharply once again. “No, no, in all seriousness, I’ve been so grateful to have Mingi in my life. Yunho is even luckier than me for meeting him, although that story is best told by someone else,” he confides easily, choosing to artfully ignore how Mingi hides his reddening face in Yunho’s shoulder. “That brings us to the second and final part of my speech.

“Mingi is caring. And no, I don’t mean the obvious ‘he cares for all his friends and family’ stuff. He really cares. All throughout high school, he got involved with every single charity event and club that existed, and when that wasn’t enough for him, he created his own. In college, he repeated the same process and became a Red Cross Disaster Volunteer. If he offers you help, he’ll go to the ends of the Earth for you.” As he keeps talking, Hongjoong feels himself get – not louder, but more insistent. He isn’t Mingi’s self-designated hype man for nothing. “So I reiterate; Yunho is the luckiest man to be able to say he has Mingi in his life, and,” he looks directly at Yunho, “I hope that you’ll always make his happiness one of your priorities. Thank you for listening, and please join me in a toast to the newly-weds.” The room applauds and raises their glasses along with Hongjoong.

“To a happy, successful marriage!”

At some point, the reception dissolves into dancing, and Hongjoong finds himself in the corner, awkwardly watching the others on the floor and sipping a glass of champagne. He lets his eyes wander, taking note of the Mingi and Yunho dancing in each other’s arms, and he isn’t surprised that San has already disappeared. Typical of him to have already become infatuated with someone. His glass empties, and even though this is already his fifth, he gets up to get another one. He doesn’t feel particularly hazy in the head, but it doesn’t stop him from needing to squint in order to see the table with the food. As he walks over to it, an arm suddenly reaches out from him from the dance floor and he’s pulled into the crowd on unsteady legs.

“Hey!” he protests, already regretting being in the crowd. Everyone feels uncomfortably close, and he doesn’t enjoy the feeling of knowing he’s boxed in. The person that the arm belongs to turns around and – oh.

He’s beautiful, is the only Hongjoong finds himself capable of thinking. Full lips, twinkling eyes, an artfully parted bang that curls over half his forehead and rests right above his eye. He feels heat rush through his cheeks, and he hopes he had at least a little flush from the champagne to cover it up. The man’s lips part in a silent exclamation of surprise when he registers who he grabbed.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I thought you were my friend Jongho.”

“I-It’s okay,” he manages to stutter over his tongue, biting it to steady his voice. “I’m Hongjoong.”

He isn’t sure why he felt the need to introduce himself, but the man smiles radiantly, so he chooses to thank that impulse.

“I’m Seonghwa. I was one of the groomsmen for Yunho.” His blanks as he tries to remember the ceremony. The only thing that comes to mind is Yunho crying as they exchanged vows and rings.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, but I don’t remember anyone from the ceremony,” he confides. “No idea who the flower-girl was or the ring-bearer. The only memory I have is the vows, and that was because Yunho was crying a waterfall and I thought it was hilarious how emotional he was getting.” And – oh – Seonghwa’s laughter is as beautiful as he is, hearty and genuine.

“That's understandable. Honestly, nothing’s gonna change. All they have now is an official certificate.” At some point, they’d unconsciously started swaying to the music, and Hongjoong thought he could feel the warmth of Seonghwa’s hands burn through his dress shirt. When had he gotten rid of his suit jacket? He couldn’t recall.

“That’s what I told Mingi! But he still insisted on making it traditional. At least they only invited fifty people.”

“You know what they say; larger weddings are more likely to have failed marriages.” He giggles at that, and as his attention diverts from dancing to keeping himself upright, he trips and falls, completely unintentionally, into Seonghwa’s arms. Which, even to his tipsy mind, is humiliating. But not only is Seonghwa beautiful, he also happens to be a real angel, because he only tightens his grip on Hongjoong’s arms and smiles again.

“Maybe we should go a little lighter on the dancing, huh?” He stifles a laugh as Hongjoong use him to steady himself before continuing. “Or maybe we should stop dancing altogether.”

“I heard stop dancing,” Hongjoong mumbles, weakly pulling at Seonghwa’s arms. “Let’s get out of here.”

Really, Hongjoong doesn’t think he’s wasted. But he’s always been a lightweight, and it’s true that champagne can get you drunk faster, and so everything’s a blur after they leave the dance floor. He remembers a giddy feeling all night and Seonghwa, but he isn’t sure what exactly happened.

He’s stupefied when he wakes up in his own bed, but with his mild headache and nausea preventing any intenseive investigation of his thoughts, he chalks it up to some kind soul escorting him to his room. When he checks himself in the mirror – with no lack of stumbling on his part, obviously still trying to recover normal human functions – he sees that he’s still wearing the dress shirt from last night, although he’s wearing a pair of pajamas that he knows don’t belong to him. He stares at his reflection for two seconds before deciding that it could be dealt with after a day of relaxation. The moment he leaves the bathroom, he smells toast, and it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that meant something had definitely happened last night. He can only hope drunk him had some decency.

He doesn’t feel sore. There’s no way he topped, so maybe nothing happened? He creeps hesitantly toward the entrance of the kitchen where he can distinctly hear someone humming. For a moment, he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him. Even in his blackout memories, he remembers Seonghwa – how could he forget, is the real question. His back is turned to him, so Hongjoong forces himself to think rationally. The chances that Seonghwa brought him back to his hotel room were low, even if he had been the one to dance with him last night. His thoughts screech to a halt as he remembers that he’d danced with Seonghwa last night and undoubtedly made a fool of himself. It would probably be best if he pretended to sneak back into his room and pretend he’s never woken up, and the universe must have a vendetta against him because Seonghwa happens to turn around at the same time he’s about to pull back from the kitchen entry.

He flashes a smile, and Hongjoong feels a wave of déjà vu crash over him. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he berates himself.

“Morning Joongie!” If standing in the entrance of the kitchen like a creeper isn’t enough, now he’s making a bigger fool of himself by having his mouth fall wide open in utter silence. Seonghwa seems undeterred because he continues with, “You passed out last night after the fifth round, so I hadn’t expected you to wake up so early.”

When his comment processes in his mind, Hongjoong blanks. Fifth round? Passed out? Staying to cook him food? When will his humiliation end?

If he has to give himself credit for anything he’s done in the past ten hours, it’s having the sense to ask, in a squeaky, mortifying voice, “Fifth round?”

Seonghwa hums, and for a moment, Hongjoong thinks he’s going to faint then and there and crack his head open on the tiling of the kitchen floor. Then he says, “You really get into Mario Kart, huh?” If Hongjoong compares his thoughts to a record table, they’ve screeched to a halt.

“Mario Kart?” he repeats, struggling to connect it with the story he’d managed to cook up beforehand. “Sorry, I. I don’t remember that,” he stutters out.

“I don’t blame you,” Seonghwa laughs, sliding the eggs and toast onto two plates and grabbing both of them. “I think the drunkness messed you up a little, though. You couldn’t stay on the road for longer than a minute.” He hands a plate to Hongjoong expectantly and heads to the small table to sit down and eat.

“How did we start playing Mario Kart?” As much as he appreciates Seonghwa sticking around, he has no idea what he did the whole time.

“You were pretty drunk, so I decided to help you back to your hotel room. But at some point you started talking, extremely passionately might I add, about Mario Kart, and when I told you I liked it too, you offered to race me on your Switch. You passed out after five rounds, two of which were on Rainbow Road.” Hongjoong stares at his eggs and regrets his life.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you into that,” he apologizes profusely, wringing his hands.

“It’s fine,” Seonghwa said dismissively, waving his hand. “You were pretty entertaining when you played.”

“I didn’t even give you a place to sleep!”

“It’s okay, Joongie. I just took one of your keycards so that I could come back in to make sure you were okay. I also tried to find pajamas for you, but I didn’t want to go through too many of your things, so I just gave you one of mine.” That explains a few things, notably why he’s only partially dressed for bed. What it doesn’t explain is why Seonghwa came back, and with the curse of a scattered mind and a hangover, Hongjoong asks precisely that.

“I don’t know, but I thought you were really cute while you were yelling at Donkey Kong for falling off the road for the seventeenth time in five minutes,” Seonghwa answers with a shrug, biting his lower lip to prevent a smile from appearing. “Guess I wanted to make sure you didn’t suffer too much.” Hongjoong ducks his head to prevent the other from noticing his rapidly spreading blush and takes a large bite of his toast to give himself time to think. Beautiful, radiant, dazzling Seonghwa thinks that he’s cute. When he’s yelling at a video game character for being stupid. For doing exactly what the controller in Hongjoong’s hands was telling him to. And, dimly, he realizes that finding someone like Seonghwa again would be a one in a million chance.

“Let me make it up to you. I’m sure a coffee date would be better than taking care of a hungover man,” he jokes, taking a stab at their current situation and how stupid it is. 

“I think I’d like a coffee date, Joongie.” The smile is back, the one that shines brighter than the moon and makes Hongjoong’s poor, sensitive eyes feel like they need sunglasses. But that’s fine with him, because even his drunken mistake happened to give him a date.

**Author's Note:**

> [my twitter!](https://twitter.com/timelessidyll)   
>  [my curiouscat!](https://curiouscat.me/timelessidyll)


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